I don’t know about you, but I hate to ask for help. Maybe it’s a source of pride on my part. Yet, so often I see the benefit of getting help.
I was recently talking to a long time client. They were talking about how long it was taking them to do this back office process. (They were getting all of the mailing addresses for their customers who purchased from this past year to send them a small thank you gift.)
To do this they were opening every order made, copying the info, and then moving on. They had spent several hours a day, over several days trying to get this information, and they still weren’t even half way there.
When I heard I told them STOP!. Computers are still not good at a lot of things, but if you have information stored in your customer database (be it CRM, sales, etc.) let the computer get that info for you. Let me write something to help.
Now some people will say, but it will cost to hire a developer to do that. Of course, but what is your time worth? Will it be worth it to hire someone?
I wrote a simple script that generated a spreadsheet with the info they needed. It took less than an hour to do. So paying me for (lets say an hours worth of work) vs. doing it yourself for 12-15 hours. How much is your time worth? Or better yet – what could you do if you had more time to grow your business? Is saving 12 hours of tedious work worth it for you? Can you do something that will grow your business by that small bill?
Always ask your developer if something can be done easier. Often it can.
About Walter Wimberly